Page 86 of Only Cold Depths
I entered the workshop, shut the door behind me, and turned on a terminal. Asterin had given me her password, so I accessed the House Collier servers and reviewed all the reports about Esmina and Pollux’s attack. I looked at every photo, watched every video, and read through the interviews with the captured Serpens Corp mercenaries.
An hour later, I rocked back in my chair and massaged my throbbing temples. All this information, and I still didn’t know any more than when I had started. I let out a tired, frustrated sigh and slowly spun my chair around, eyeing the shelves with their precise rows of hammers, laser cutters, and other tools. Asterin was as obsessively neat as I was messy. Even though this wasn’t my workshop, I could still find anything I needed, thanks to the labels on every object.
My gaze locked onto the shelves filled with items Asterin had collected from the mines she’d worked in. An idea popped into my mind, and I spun my chair back to the terminal. Leland had compiled a list of every item the mercenaries had tried to steal from the House Collier mineral exchange. I pulled up a hologram of the list, then grabbed the corresponding stones from the shelves. I had always been a visual person, and laying the actual, physical items out on the table helped meseethem much better than just scanning the list.
Aquamarine, blue diamond, chalcedony, indocolite, lapis lazuli, sapphire, sapphsidian, topaz, tourmaline, turquoise . . .
I put the samples in alphabetical order, hoping that would help me solve the mystery, but it didn’t, so I rearranged the samples in reverse order. Still nothing. I tried several different variations, including size and weight, but no answers popped into my mind.
“Why did you want to steal these items?” I asked, the workshop walls soaking up my question. “Why these gemstones? Why not lunarium or something more valuable?”
A knock sounded, startling me. The door creaked open, and I spun around in my chair. “Asterin! I’m stuck on something, but maybe you can help me figure it out—”
My words died on my lips. Asterin wasn’t standing in the workshop—Wendell Zimmer was.
“What areyoudoing here?”
He grimaced at my sharp tone. “Lord Aldrich, Lady Verona, and Lady Asterin are giving Beatrice a tour of the shipping yard and mineral exchange, so House Collier and House Zimmer can continue their negotiations about a potential alliance.”
So that was the mysterious business Asterin had this morning. She was probably even more unhappy about the Zimmers being here than I was.
“They didn’t need me for the negotiations, so I decided to go exploring. Lady Verona mentioned you were in Asterin’s workshop. The door was unlocked, so I thought I would see if you needed some help.” Wendell’s gaze skittered away from mine, and he turned around in a slow circle, examining the workshop.
“A bit small, but the obsessive organization makes it feel much bigger than it truly is.” A wry look flickered across his face. “My workshop isn’tnearlythis neat and tidy. The House Zimmer lab techs say it’s a wonder I can find anything amid all the clutter.”
“My Quill Corp workshop is a bit cluttered as well,” I admitted.
Wendell gave me a small smile of commiseration, but it quickly wilted away. “Well, you look busy. Forgive me for interrupting. I’ll leave you to your project.”
He turned toward the door. I thought about my conversation with my unexpected family last night. Beatrice might have jettisoned me from House Zimmer like a piece of junk purged into the black void of space, but Wendell hadn’t known about me. Neither had Zane. For that, they were blameless.
Once again, that tremulous spark of hope flickered in my heart, and for the first time, I decided to nurture it instead of squashing it.
“Actually, I could use some help,” I said in a tentative voice. “If you have the time.”
Wendell spun around, his face lighting up. “Really? Are you sure?”
I wasn’t sure, not by a long shot, but I gestured for him to step over to the table. He listened while I explained everything that had happened during Esmina and Pollux’s attack at the mineral exchange.
Wendell picked up one stone after another, hefting them in his hand before setting them back down. “The mercenaries certainly targeted an odd assortment of items. Most corporations don’t care much about gemstones, since there is far more money to be made in iron, wood, coal, and the like.”
“Exactly! I don’t understand why professional mercenaries would try to steal these specific items. The gemstones are all readily available, and you could get them in any quantity you wanted, if you had enough credits.”
Wendell stroked his chin, deep in thought. “Perhaps it’s not the quantity that’s important. Perhaps it’s the quality or the wide assortment. Some of these gemstones are rare, if not all that valuable. Or perhaps it has something to do with the properties of the stones themselves . . .”
He threw out a few more theories that we debated back and forth. No answers presented themselves, but talking to Wendell was actuallyfun. He was a spelltech, someone capable of infusing psionic energy into weapons, so his magic was different from mine, but at heart, he was an engineer, an inventor, just like I was. I’d always wondered where that part of my personality had come from, why I’d always been so curious about how things worked. It was . . . nice to realize I’d inherited that piece of myself from Wendell.
“Perhaps if we run some simulations, an answer might present itself?” he suggested.
So that’s what we did. We called up databases about each type of gemstone, but nothing obvious jumped out. Each stone could be used in a variety of ways, from making jewelry to being carved into statues to even providing glow-in-the-dark lights when crushed and mixed with the right chemicals.
After about an hour, Wendell sighed and looked up from the terminal at the table next to mine. “There are just too many variables. We need to know more abouthowthe mercenaries wanted to use the gemstones. Do you remember anything else they said or did?”
“No. I didn’t follow Esmina and Pollux into the mineral exchange, so I didn’t hear any orders they might have given their mercenaries.”
“Well, I suppose we’ll just have to keep working until we figure it out.” Wendell smiled at me, and I found myself smiling back.
The workshop door banged open, and Asterin stomped inside. She stopped, her gaze zipping back and forth between Wendell and me.
